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$ORRY! Gov. Cuomo at the Capitol yesterday, after a deal to raisetaxes on higher incomes andcut them on lower incomes. Photo: Shannon DeCelle

(Shannon DeCelle)

SORRY: Gov. Cuomo at the Capitol yesterday, after a deal to raise taxes on higher incomes and cut them on lower incomes. (
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ALBANY — So much for “cutting” taxes.

The new 8.82 percent top tax rate for millionaires — billed by Gov. Cuomo and Legislative leaders as a cut — still leaves New York among the top seven states with the highest rates on the wealthiest filers.

And the tax rates that were ratified by the Legislature early this morning will leave the city’s top earners shouldering the nation’s highest combined local and state tax rates.

That combined rate on seven-figure earners who live in the city will stand at a whopping 12.7 percent next year, according to the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

Cuomo called a special session of the Legislature for noon yesterday, but because of haggling over language, voting didn’t occur for hours.

The state Senate last night unanimously passed the wide-ranging bill by 55-0, while the Assembly approved the measures by 130-8 early this morning.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau) defended the deal, noting that rates will go down for everyone with a taxable income of less than $300,000.

“We’re cutting taxes, in my opinion,” Skelos told reporters.

“There’s one bracket that will go down — not go down as much as people anticipated, but the overwhelming amount of people in the state are going to have a real tax cut.”

Cuomo and lawmakers reached a deal on the new tax rates just weeks before the current temporary rates — topping out at 8.97 percent for high-wage earners — were due to expire and revert to the old, 6.85 percent rate.

State Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long saw the new tax plan as “following the European formula of failure.”

“We consider what was passed nothing more than a tax hike,” he said. “The state’s going to get $2 billion more in tax revenues” than if lawmakers had allowed two “temporary” top rates to expire Dec. 31.

“There were no [spending] cuts made,” Long noted.

“What New York state should be doing is lowering taxes across the board for everybody, and you can’t do that without cutting the size of government. I thought Andrew Cuomo was on his way to doing that, but he evidently lost his will to put up the fight.”

Cuomo, who during his campaign pledged to oppose new taxes, has defended the plan as a practical necessity in the face of a potential $3.5 billion state budget gap for the fiscal year that begins on April 1.